y available personal computer was the Scelbi-8H that went on sale in March 1974. The machine was designed around the Intel 8008 microprocessor, a less powerful 8-bit design than the later 8080. A machine in kit form with 1K of memory sold for $440.00. About 200 of these machines were sold in kit form and assembled. Half were the Scelbi-8H hobby machines, the rest were Scelbi-8B business computers, which were released in April 1975, having as much as 16K of memory.The first commercially successful microcomputer was the MITS Altair 8800 designed by Ed Roberts. It was introduced to the world as a cover story in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. The Altair used the already mentioned Intel 8080 8-bit microprocessor. The most basic kit version was offered for sale at $397.00. A completely assembled and tested version sold for $498.00. However, what you got for your money was not a whole lot. What you did get was a blue and white box that housed a motherboard, a front panel with switches and lights indicating register contents, the power supply and 16 expansion slots. It came with no standard amount of memory or interfaces. The minimum usable configuration was an 8K system that MITS sold for $995.00. In addition to this you also needed a cassette interface and recorder, and a terminal. Therefore, a truly complete 8K system actually cost you about $1900.00. MITS sold thousands of Altairs. One of the features that made it a success and characterized most other successful future designs was its open architecture.Those 16 expansion slots made possible a wealth of alternatives that the designers of the machine could never have imagined. They allowed for growth and diversification of the machine spawned another complete industry of add-on board developers and manufacturers, and in so doing essentially guaranteed the success of the product.In addition to having the distinction of being the first commercially successful microcomputer, the...
